Monday, January 20, 2014

Martin Luther King in Boston

Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Boston in 1951 to attend
Boston University graduate school, earning a Ph. D. in theology in 1955. Howard Thurman’s sermon’s at the Marsh
Chapel, including his accounts of visiting Gandi taught King about nonviolent
protest. Dr. Thurman was the first black
dean of a predominantly white American university. Today the BU library houses King’s personal
papers.

My Dad was at Boston University at the same time as Dr. King. He matriculated in 1952 and graduated in
1957. Dad took many classes in theology,
but he was a Government major. I don’t
know if he ever crossed paths with Dr. King, or if he would have even known him
in those years before he was famous. But
Dad always liked to mention the fact that they went to the same school at the
same time.

Dr. King loved Boston after choosing to study here because
of the diversity in the community. It
was in Boston that he met his wife, Coretta Scott, who was a student at the New
England Conservatory. He returned to
Boston in 1965 to address a joint session of the Massachusetts legislature, and
on the following day he led a freedom march from the South End to the Boston
Common where he spoke to 22,000 people in the rain.

Although we tend to think of Dr. King fighting for justice
in the South, he returned to Boston and the North many times to address
injustices all over the United States. On
11 September 1964, while donating his papers to BU, he said:

“This struggle, while
we are based in the South, is a national struggle and it requires concern of
people all over the nation… Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. The problem is very serious in the
North. Racial injustice does exist in
the North in a very serious way.”

The night of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. in 1968, there was violent unrest in the city. But the following night, although many US
cities had continuing violence and riots, the rock star James Brown kept the
peace in Boston. He had been scheduled
to appear in the Boston Garden, but agreed with Mayor Kevin White to have his
concert broadcast live on WGBH TV. It
was hoped that this would keep Bostonians in front of their TVs at home instead
of protesting on the streets- and it worked.

Today, there are lasting signs of Dr. King’s legacy in
Boston - Martin Luther King Boulevard in Roxbury, The MLK Towers housing project,
the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast, scholarships, schools, sculptures
and community programs all bear his name and continue his memory.

Click at this link to read a fragment of Martin Luther King’s
essay on his application to the Boston University Graduate School

4 comments:

Besides the sermons of Howard Thurman, B.U. Professor John Swomley (of the Fellowship of Reconciliation) was a major inspiration towards non-violence. Swomley later moved to Kansas City, where I knew him. And Swomley and my father, with other faculty and students at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, joined by similar professors and students from other area seminaries, spent the night of Martin Luther King's assassination going door to door to talk to people in a successful attempt to provide a peaceful alternative for the expression of outrage and sorrow that otherwise might have resulted in rioting.- Jeremy Bangs

I met Martin Luther King, Sr. in Boston sometime, I'm guessing, between 1965 and 1968. We students were doing a community project - cleaning up a South End park or proposed park, I think - and he was apparently involved in the same project on a national scale. He took the time to speak to all of us individually to thank us for taking part. I have good memories of this, not bittersweet, so I'm pretty sure this was before his son's assassination or the other family tragedies to come.

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About Me

Author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog and occasional genealogy speaker. My family research includes Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, with a smattering of Nova Scotia. Please contact me if you see your ancestors on this blog. I would love to share information. I am the former secretary of the New Hampshire Mayflower Society, former President of the Londonderry Historical Society, member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Mass. Society of Genealogists, The National Genealogical Society, and the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.